“Yelena.” I halted in the doorway, looking back over my shoulder.“You once said I wasn’t ready to believe your reason for killing Reyad. I’ll believe you now.”“But I’m not ready to tell you,” I said and left the room.”

“When I’m there, Rube’s eyes fire into mine. Make sure you get up, they tell me, and I nod, then jump up. The jacket’s off. My skin’s warm. My wolfish hair sticks up as always, nice and thick. I’m ready now. I’m ready to keep standing up, no matter what, I’m ready to believe that I welcome the pain and that I want it so much that I will look for it. I will seek it out. I’ll run to it and throw myself into it. I’ll stand in front of it in blind terror and let it beat me down and down till my courage hangs off me in rags. Then it will dismantle me and stand me up naked, beat me some more and my slaughter-blood will fly from my mouth and the pain will drink it, feel it, steal it and conceal it in the pockets of its guts and it will taste me. It will just keep standing me up, and I won’t let it know. I won’t tell it that I feel it. I won’t give it the satisfaction. No, the pain will have to kill me.”

“Night, Pidge,” he whispered, turning over.I fidgeted, not yet ready to sleep. “Trav?” I said, leaning up to rest my chin on his shoulder.“Yeah?”“I know I’m drunk, and we just got into a ginormous fight over this, but….”“I’m not having sex with you, so quit asking,” he said, his back still turned to me.“What? No!” I cried.Travis laughed and turned, looking at me with a soft expression. “What, Pigeon?”

“I haven’t heard you laugh like that in quite a while. I was glad to hear it. I’m tired of seeing you in pain.” he said. “I’m going to do my best to keep you from ever hurting again. That’s a promise,” he said, softly.I believed him. I leaned over to give him a kiss.“I love you,” he said once we’d separated. “Now let’s go home.”

“I hope you don’t mind my joining you,” said Leanne. I minded. After all, she’d tried to kill me. A girl in a novel would say it was hard to believe, but it wasn’t.”

“Fix that hair! Close that mind! Repeat after me! Page me the second the old man croaks it! Now, are you boys ready? A Seabrook boy is always ready. Ready to work. Ready to play. Ready to listen to his teachers, especially the greatest educator of them all, Jesus. as Jesus said to me once, Greg, what's your secret? And I said, Jesus--study your notes! Get to class! Shave that beard! You show up to your first day on the job dressed like a hippie, of course they're going to crucify you, I don't care whose son you are . . .”